I've just released Foolscap-0.1.1, the next-generation-of-PB RPC library,
available in the usual place at:
http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/FoolsCaphttp://twistedmatrix.com/~warner/Foolscap/
This release enhances many of the "constraints" (a form of explicit
typechecking that can be applied to messages sent over the wire), fixes a
long-standing bug in Tub.stopService() which makes it easier to write trial
unit tests for code which uses Foolscap (and which was hopefully responsible
for many of the spurious test failures we've seen in the past), and adds a
one-way no-response 'callRemoteOnly' method. Full details are in the release
notes, attached below.
Due to the implementation of callRemoteOnly, this release is *not*
wire-protocol compatible with the previous 0.1.0 release. Fortunately, it
knows this, and the version-negotiation code will refuse to connect to an
incompatible peer.
Many thanks to my employer, AllMyData.com, for supporting development of this
release. We're starting to use it for an internal project, and we're
discovering all sorts of usability improvements that need to be made. The
next batch will probably be centered around the needs of long-running server
programs: specifically persistent mapping from externally-visible (but
generally unguessable) names to internal handler objects, such that each time
the process gets restarted, the same name maps to the next incarnation of the
handler object. We already have this facility for the private key (and thus
the TubID), but now it would be nice to have it for individual objects.
have a well-connected day,
-Brian
* Release 0.1.1 (03 Apr 2007)
** Incompatibility Warning
Because of the technique used to implement callRemoteOnly() (specifically the
commandeering of reqID=0), this release is not compatible with the previous
release. The protocol negotiation version numbers have been bumped to avoid
confusion, meaning that 0.1.0 Tubs will refuse to connect to 0.1.1 Tubs, and
vice versa. Be aware that the errors reported when this occurs may not be
ideal, in particular I think the "reconnector" (tub.connectTo) might not log
this sort of connection failure in a very useful way.
** changes to Constraints
Method specifications inside RemoteInterfaces can now accept or return
'Referenceable' to indicate that they will accept a Referenceable of any
sort. Likewise, they can use something like 'RIFoo' to indicate that they
want a Referenceable or RemoteReference that implements RIFoo. Note that this
restriction does not quite nail down the directionality: in particular there
is not yet a way to specify that the method will only accept a Referenceable
and not a RemoteReference. I'm waiting to see if such a thing is actually
useful before implementing it. As an example:
class RIUser(RemoteInterface):
def get_age():
return int
class RIUserListing(RemoteInterface):
def get_user(name=str):
"""Get the User object for a given name."""
return RIUser
In addition, several constraints have been enhanced. StringConstraint and
ListConstraint now accept a minLength= argument, and StringConstraint also
takes a regular expression to apply to the string it inspects (the regexp can
either be passed as a string or as the output of re.compile()). There is a
new SetConstraint object, with 'SetOf' as a short alias. Some examples:
HexIdConstraint = StringConstraint(minLength=20, maxLength=20,
regexp=r'[\dA-Fa-f]+')
class RITable(RemoteInterface):
def get_users_by_id(id=HexIdConstraint):
"""Get a set of User objects; all will have the same ID number."""
return SetOf(RIUser, maxLength=200)
These constraints should be imported from foolscap.schema . Once the
constraint interface is stabilized and documented, these classes will
probably be moved into foolscap/__init__.py so that you can just do 'from
foolscap import SetOf', etc.
*** UnconstrainedMethod
To disable schema checking for a specific method, use UnconstrainedMethod in
the RemoteInterface definition:
from foolscap.remoteinterface import UnconstrainedMethod
class RIUse(RemoteInterface):
def set_phone_number(area_code=int, number=int):
return bool
set_arbitrary_data = UnconstrainedMethod
The schema-checking code will allow any sorts of arguments through to this
remote method, and allow any return value. This is like schema.Any(), but for
entire methods instead of just specific values. Obviously, using this defeats
te whole purpose of schema checking, but in some circumstances it might be
preferable to allow one or two unconstrained methods rather than resorting to
leaving the entire class left unconstrained (by not declaring a
RemoteInterface at all).
*** internal schema implementation changes
Constraints underwent a massive internal refactoring in this release, to
avoid a number of messy circular imports. The new way to convert a
"shorthand" description (like 'str') into an actual constraint object (like
StringConstraint) is to adapt it to IConstraint.
In addition, all constraints were moved closer to their associated
slicer/unslicer definitions. For example, SetConstraint is defined in
foolscap.slicers.set, right next to SetSlicer and SetUnslicer. The
constraints for basic tokens (like lists and ints) live in
foolscap.constraint .
** callRemoteOnly
A new "fire and forget" API was added to tell Foolscap that you want to send
a message to the remote end, but do not care when or even whether it arrives.
These messages are guaranteed to not fire an errback if the connection is
already lost (DeadReferenceError) or if the connection is lost before the
message is delivered or the response comes back (ConnectionLost). At present,
this no-error philosophy is so strong that even schema Violation exceptions
are suppressed, and the callRemoteOnly() method always returns None instead
of a Deferred. This last part might change in the future.
This is most useful for messages that are tightly coupled to the connection
itself, such that if the connection is lost, then it won't matter whether the
message was received or not. If the only state that the message modifies is
both scoped to the connection (i.e. not used anywhere else in the receiving
application) and only affects *inbound* data, then callRemoteOnly might be
useful. It may involve less error-checking code on the senders side, and it
may involve fewer round trips (since no response will be generated when the
message is delivered).
As a contrived example, a message which informs the far end that all
subsequent messages on this connection will sent entirely in uppercase (such
that the recipient should apply some sort of filter to them) would be
suitable for callRemoteOnly. The sender does not need to know exactly when
the message has been received, since Foolscap guarantees that all
subsequently sent messages will be delivered *after* the 'SetUpperCase'
message. And, the sender does not need to know whether the connection was
lost before or after the receipt of the message, since the establishment of a
new connection will reset this 'uppercase' flag back to some known
initial-contact state.
rref.callRemoteOnly("set_uppercase", True) # returns None!
This method is intended to parallel the 'deliverOnly' method used in E's
CapTP protocol. It is also used (or will be used) in some internal Foolscap
messages to reduce unnecessary network traffic.
** new Slicers: builtin set/frozenset
Code has been added to allow Foolscap to handle the built-in 'set' and
'frozenset' types that were introduced in python-2.4 . The wire protocol does
not distinguish between 'set' and 'sets.Set', nor between 'frozenset' and
'sets.ImmutableSet'.
For the sake of compatibility, everything that comes out of the deserializer
uses the pre-2.4 'sets' module. Unfortunately that means that a 'set' sent
into a Foolscap connection will come back out as a 'sets.Set'. 'set' and
'sets.Set' are not entirely interoperable, and concise things like 'added =
new_things - old_things' will not work if the objects are of different types
(but note that things like 'added = new_things.difference(old_things)' *do*
work).
The current workaround is for remote methods to coerce everything to a
locally-preferred form before use. Better solutions to this are still being
sought. The most promising approach is for Foolscap to unconditionally
deserialize to the builtin types on python >= 2.4, but then an application
which works fine on 2.3 (by using sets.Set) will fail when moved to 2.4 .
** Tub.stopService now indicates full connection shutdown, helping Trial tests
Like all twisted.application.service.MultiService instances, the
Tub.stopService() method returns a Deferred that indicates when shutdown has
finished. Previously, this Deferred could fire a bit early, when network
connections were still trying to deliver the last bits of data. This caused
problems with the Trial unit test framework, which insist upon having a clean
reactor between tests.
Trial test writers who use Foolscap should include the following sequence in
their twisted.trial.unittest.TestCase.tearDown() methods:
def tearDown(self):
from foolscap.eventual import flushEventualQueue
d = tub.stopService()
d.addCallback(flushEventualQueue)
return d
This will insure that all network activity is complete, and that all message
deliveries thus triggered have been retired. This activity includes any
outbound connections that were initiated (but not completed, or finished
negotiating), as well as any listening sockets.
The only remaining problem I've seen so far is with reactor.resolve(), which
is used to translate DNS names into addresses, and has a window during which
you can shut down the Tub and it will leave a cleanup timer lying around. The
only solution I've found is to avoid using DNS names in URLs. Of course for
real applications this does not matter: it only makes a difference in Trial
unit tests which are making heavy use of short-lived Tubs and connections.